


A Cup of Ambition

by greenbucket



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Gen, No Dialogue, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-21
Updated: 2017-09-21
Packaged: 2018-12-24 07:58:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12008418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenbucket/pseuds/greenbucket
Summary: A day in the life of Alice Atley.





	A Cup of Ambition

**Author's Note:**

> A late offering for Day 3 of OMGCheckPlease! Women Week 2017: Women of Colour

Alice sits down with a huff and toes off her shoes instantly, groaning a little as she reaches down to rub her thumbs into the arches of her feet. Today has been a fucking long ass day. 

It's been going wrong since this morning. When she woke up, the sky was clear and blue and her weather app said there was a small chance of showers but nothing to worry about so she’d worn a dress and a light jacket for the first time all year, feeling fancy and lighthearted, and set off to cycle into the campus happily.

Halfway there, dark black clouds take hold and break open to pour endless sheets of freezing cold rain on her, running down her face fast enough that she nearly collides with a car twice. It leaves her shaken and her skin chafes with her clothes wet and heavy on her. She can only thank whatever common sense she used to have that at least she’d thought to pack her laptop and papers in a waterproof satchel. 

The sun is back by the time she’s locking her bike up but the damage is done and she can see the students reacting in her nine AM, hushed whispers and not-so-subtle pointed looks to each other. She bumps into Jerome on her way to her office and he’s busy talking with one of his students but his widening eyes and wince as a greeting say it all. 

Alice is ready to sulk for the next few hours until the seminar she’s leading at one, turning on the portable heater she’d snuck into her room ages ago because she’s freezing and heating is centrally controlled (meaning never turned on), but then she remembers she has a meeting with Eric at eleven. Alice’s as fond of the kid as an adviser can be when they haven’t yet endured the agony of a thesis together and she loves to listen to him chatter but today she’d really rather just go home, go to bed and start over.

She gets a coffee and pours three sugars into it to make herself feel a little better instead. She drinks it sitting on one of the benches in Lake Quad, already drying in the warm sun that’s emerged from behind the clouds several hours too late. Still, it’s warming and it’s soothing to be surrounded by the buzz of activity with just her coffee and the freedom to pretend she doesn’t have a million and one other things to be doing. 

Eric is as chatty as ever - and God does she wish the kid would actually contact the disability services she’s hinted towards at least a dozen times, poor kid’s fraying at the edges his focus is so shot to hell - and he apologizes at least three times for not bringing baked goods. Alice assures him it’s fine because it is, they’re meeting to talk about his education not her love for his food, but she can’t help feeling a little wistful for the cranberry muffins he’d brought the time before last when it hits three in the afternoon and she hasn’t had a moment to catch a bite since breakfast.

It carries on that way for the rest of the day. She has a backlog of emails, she has a departmental meeting and two more meetings with PhD students that are getting antsy over feedback, her feet are rubbing like nobody’s business where her shoes are still damp from the morning. Alice barely has enough time to make the runs across campus to such and such building and another, scheduling Gods that be obviously forgetting to factor in any transition time. 

She’s just waved out the last stragglers in her last seminar of the day, the sun setting behind the campus buildings as the clock hits seven, when she goes to check her lesson plans are all in place for tomorrow and finds them all missing. Every single one. She holds back a scream. 

The IT office is supposed to close at six but she’s been in this situation often enough to know that Kayla stays until seven thirty most days finishing things up. Alice really does run across campus this time.   _This has happened before, the computer system here sucks and you know this, they’re probably lost in some cloud bullshit_ , she reminds herself as she runs.  _It’s all good._

Alice can only imagine she looks quite the sight, banging on the IT team’s door with all her might, clothes wrecked and wrinkled from the rain and gasping for breath. Luckily, Kayla comes quickly with only one fond eyeroll and fixes everything quickly and with a computer knowledge superior to anything Alice will ever achieve. She’s secure in this; some people have American Studies know-how, some have computers. She’s crafted her life so she can actually make use of her knowledge even if to know what Kayla does would probably be more generally applicable.

By the time that’s all sorted and Alice packs up all her things again, stepping in the one large puddle that always forms in the parking lot on the way to get her bike because of course, and cycles home to her apartment it’s coming on to nine in the evening. She’s wet, she’s starving, she’s exhausted. And now she’s sitting at her kitchen table rubbing her feet, the prospect of making dinner enough to push a headache on.

Her apartment is quiet. Alice is okay with that, despite what people - her mother - have to say about it. She’s in no rush to get married and have a family or whatever else. It’s just quiet, and sometimes that’s a blessing and some days like today when she wants to vent and have dinner cooked for her and someone rub her feet it’s not.

She checks her phone and sees she has messages from her tutees on Tandem, her sister-in-law sharing adorable photos of her niece’s birthday party, her friend-maybe-more Romane inviting her to a jazz night next week. They’re all pleasant pressures on her time, a contrast to the whole of the day so far. Not that Alice doesn’t love her job or her students but, fuck, it’s exhausting sometimes.

Deeming her feet at least slightly better equipped to do their job, she leaves her phone for the time being and hauls herself up to have a hot shower and get into her pyjamas. She’s thinking take out, a glass of wine, some good TV stored up on her DVR. She deserves it and even if she doesn’t she’s a grown woman who can do what she wants. Well, she’ll include a side of vegetables in whatever she orders, lest her mother magically sense she hasn’t and phone to remind her what’s what. Her own articles can wait for another night, the literature too dense to decipher after a day like today.

Alice needs to be rested if she’s going to be ready to do it all again tomorrow.


End file.
